What corruption looks like and why Chris Wiliamson MP was right to say what he did.
Yesterday I watched Angela Rayner on the Victoria Derbyshire show and I have to say that I was very disappointed by her inability to challenge the media narrative on anti-semitism.
Why don’t our MPs ever mention the thousands of members across the country who have been smeared and abused by opponents of the Labour Party and fellow Labour Party members? Is it that Labour MPs are unaware of members being abused and smeared by well-known organised troll groups, are they too scared to talk about them or are they actually colluding with them and hoping they succeed? It’s difficult to know when all we get from our MP’s is silence. Some Labour MP’s are followers of some of the UK’s worst anti-Corbyn Twitter trolls who spend their days abusing Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters online.
I know many people who have been attacked. I had to fight to retain my membership after I was the victim of a bungled smear by a well-known organised troll group. I was cleared of any wrong doing but for over a year now I have been trying to piece together what happened and by doing so I uncovered corruption at the heart of the disciplinary process.
My case involves two Labour Party members, one of whom was placed under investigation (despite being the victim of an incompetent smear that was easily rebuffed) and another member who was never placed under under investigation despite their open hostility towards the Labour Party and despite the numerous complaints made against them, including an official complaint made to Iain McNicol as far back as 2017. One of these members was a Corbyn supporter and therefore fair game and the other was being protected from investigation despite the fact that they were attacking the party and calling for it to be wrecked, attacking Jewish Corbyn supporters in vitriolic ways and smearing recently deceased Labour Party figures just hours after they died, namely Paul Flynn MP and the filmmaker Simon Baker.
After three years of attacks it is quite clear that a pattern has emerged. These organised troll groups are focusing on Labour Party branch/CLP officers, Councillors and prospective Councillors. I have the names and e-mails of many of the people involved in this scandal but up until recently the Party was not interested in rooting out this corruption. The good news is that some of the guilty staff have now been removed or have chosen to leave the organisation, albeit some of them with stolen hard drives under their arms and in to the loving arms of the rightwing press.
I have three separate emails from the same senior member of staff in the Disputes Team who (no matter how many times I tried) refused to investigate my troll even though many other people had complained about them too. At that point I didn’t even know the identity of my troll but the Labour Party did and it is beyond shocking that they continued to refused to investigate them. This is the one question they will never be able to answer: given all the evidence they had, why was this troll not investigated even though they were calling for the Labour Party to be wrecked.
Chris Williamson MP travelled the country meeting thousands of enthusiastic Labour Party members and received no credit for this from his fellow MP’s. Do our MP’s really think Chris Williamson is an anti-semite? Do they really, in their heart of hearts, think that Chris Williamson hates Jewish people for being Jewish? As far as I know the charge against him now is not even one of antisemitism but of ‘bringing the party in to disrepute’ – so many MP’s are misrepresenting the case against him even now. Bringing the party in to disrepute is a very broad term and is therefore a very effective tool to use when selectively targeting Jeremy Corbyn supporters.
The Labour Party has now acknowledged that some staff had been acting in a dishonest way when it responded to the BBC Panorama documentary with these words:- “Disaffected former officials include those who have always opposed Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, worked to actively undermine it, and have both personal and political axes to grind.”
Now we know that some corrupt staff were allowing blatant smears to gain traction, what Chris Williamson said is not so controversial. How is it not being too soft on smears when you are allowing those smears to get people put under investigation and protecting the trolls who make them?
My evidence is now with the EHRC because the Labour Party have refused to apologise to me for allowing a troll to smear me.
This is what the corruption looks like and this is just some of the information that the EHRC has received.
I was investigated for posting a link to an article called “The Day Israel Attacked America”. My troll couldn’t be bothered to actually click on the link but assumed it was about 9-11. It wasn’t. It was about an historical event that happened in 1967 that isn’t even a matter of dispute. The BBC made a documentary about this same event in 2002. What is more shocking than this however is the fact that the Labour Complaints team either didn’t bother to look at the link either or was happy to overlook this mistake.
I also posted a link called “George Galloway: Zionism and Nazism co-operated”. Again, this title was taken as enough to demonstrate my “Jew Hate” which is the disgusting term my troll used in their disgusting complaint email. When you actually clicked on this link it simply took you to a Channel 4 News interview between George Galloway and John McTernan that took place in the Channel 4 News studio. Channel 4 chose the title and Channel 4 conducted the interview and Channel 4 created the link. You can only imagine what I felt like being asked by Sam Matthews (under the threat of expulsion) why I chose to post a link from the Channel 4 Youtube page without comment. I responded by saying that if you have a problem with this news item you should speak to Channel 4.
I was cleared of any wrong doing but it did take three months to be cleared. It’s difficult to describe what it feels like to be placed under investigation. It’s not something you talk about or share with even your friends and family. It’s embarrassing and you tend to choose to suffer in silence. Many people leave the party when this happens but the complaint against me was so obviously a smear I was determined to fight this and demanded answers. I used to think that this was a case of incompetence but I am now convinced that this was part of a deliberate and corrupt attempt to silence people like me. I was a Corbyn supporter and I am Chair of the Dorset Labour Campaign Forum.
In order to get to the bottom of this matter I did a Subject Access Request and received all of the correspondence in this case. The Party failed to send the information to me within the legal time limit and I had two complaints to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) upheld. What didn’t they want me to know? Many emails were redacted in full (which is against the spirit of data protection law) but I got lucky. Despite the redactions, the Data Team failed to redact the name of my troll.
It was unbelievable. Even though I’d asked the Party on three occasions to investigate my anonymous troll they had always refused to do so. I hadn’t known who had trolled me but the Complaints Team and the Disputes Team did. I was never meant to find out. When I discovered that my troll was a Labour Party member, was a well-known internet troll and had been the subject of an official complaint as far back in 2017, I realised that something much more sinister was afoot. This person has attacked the Labour Party on a daily basis for two years and yet the Complaints and Disputes Team have allowed this to continue unabated. This person was still a member in April 2019 and as far as I know they are still a member. How did a troll who spends most of their time attacking the party get to smear hundreds of people without challenge?
All of this is relevant to the debate about Chris Williamson, given that he is in danger of being expelled. He has known all about my case since the spring of 2018 and I have kept him informed ever since. He has received all of my evidence in hard copy, as have Tom Watson, Shami Chakrabarti, Jennie Formby and numerous other people. Chris Williamson is the only Labour Party figure ever to have shown any concern about my case and the matter of vexatious complaints in general. It may be cases like mine that informed him to make the comments he did i.e. that the Party was not dealing robustly enough with attacks by opponents that were obviously smears. He had my evidence in order to be able to say this. He never said that there is no anti-semitism in the party but he was aware of the smear against me and when he said what he did I thought, finally, an MP recognising that some of us are being targeted and smeared. Rather than be hounded out of the Party by fellow Labour MP’s, our MPs should be taking a leaf out of Chris’s book and asking if the corruption at the heart of the Complaints process has now been eliminated. Personally I don’t think it has been because Corbyn supporters are still being automatically suspended or investigated before any detailed examination of their cases has taken place. My troll has gloated about reporting hundreds of members to the Complaints Team.
The fact is that my evidence highlights how the Complaints and Disputes process became corrupted and was being used to target Jeremy Corbyn supporters. Chris Williamson was doing the party a favour by questioning its response to some of the anti-semitism smears. The Labour Party needs to know that I am more than willing to hand over all of the rest of the evidence I have gathered to Chris Williamson’s Legal Team because he is the only senior Labour Party figure who seems to genuinely care about what has really been going on behind the scenes. My evidence backs up what he has been trying to say.
Back now to the story of the two Labour Party members – one of whom was placed under investigation for three months for reposting a Channel 4 news item, and the other member who was protected from investigation, month after month after month, perhaps until very recently?
This is a small sample of my trolls tweets and retweets …… go figure?!?!? These tweets did not merit an investigation and my request for an investigation was rejected three times by the Disputes Team. Funnily enough, the staff member who refused to investigate on three separate occasion popped up in a national newspaper a week after the Panorama program to attack the Party. Was he one of the “disaffected former officials” who “have always opposed Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership” and “worked to actively undermine it” and who had “personal and political axes to grind.”?
MY TROLLS TWEETS (tweets that didn’t warrant an investigation.)
“The Party needs to be wrecked. I don’t fear that outcome. I hope for it”
“Jeremy …. you’re a rancid antisemite”
“It is a toxic, racist mess”
“Jeremy Corbyn is a racist antisemite”
“Hi BBC Radio 4. I don’t pay my licence fees to listen to antisemitism-denying ****ers like Michale Rosen. No platform for racists, please”. (Michael Rosen is Jewish).
“A sanctuary for antisemites, led by a man who sees nothing wrong with racially discriminating against Jews”
“Sad for the guys family, but Simon Baker was a troll and a racist. It speaks volumes about UK Labour that it’s leadership has sought to eulogise the man” (tweeted just a few hours after the Labour Party filmmaker died suddenly of a heart attack).
“I hope Channel 4 News resisted the urge to put on one of the Jewish Voice for Labour ghouls in a misguided attempt at balance, or one of the Novara Media gobs to stir up controversy”.
“no matter how funny it might seem it isn’t on to throw eggs at racists like Jeremy Corbyn”
“He was a Labour Party antisemite. Let’s not brush over the facts” (This was posted just hours after Labour MP Paul Flynn died).
“A steaming pile of racial hatred and misogynist bullying”
“Most of the people elected to the NEC yesterday should not be anywhere near a mainstream political party”
“Jon Lansman … watches on as Jew hate is unleashed on the UK via the very political militia he created”
“The JVL … a fringe faction full of Holocaust deniers and Jew-haters”
“You can be sure it’s just another bullshit PR exercise”
“Stand Up To Racism is a front for the rape-apologist cult, Socialist Workers Party”
“All they want to do is prop up a 70 year old antisemite who hasn’t had a fresh idea since 1983”
“What a bunch of clowns. Dangerous hateful, pathetic clowns”
RETWEETS by my troll.
“Corbynites. A phalanx of fucks. A Trojan of Trots. A Punnet of pricks”
“Fuck off. You are the Blackshirts now, you Jewibaiting shitbag”
“I imagine Owen Jones is making noises right now that can only be heard by dogs and shit-weasels”
“We’ve had four years of the Labour Party refusing to wipe it’s own arse”
“MPs are pledging to support the most antisemitic party since the Nazis”
“One after another. It is filling up with them. Like a blocked drain”
“The Labour leadership and compliance seems to be an utter sewer”
“Jeremy Corbyn … we know who you are. We know what you are. You lie as easily as you breathe”
“John McDonnell … you far left fundamentalist schmuck-lord extremist … you’re a yiddified momsa”
“John McDonnell … an enabler of racists”
“the antisemitic sewer into which Labour has sunk”
“Fucking rallies. I’m sick to death of the patricians of Socialism”
“JVL are Jewbaiters. Channels that use them are deliberately jewbaiting”
“Siri: Would you like me to search for Corbyn is a wanker”
“Just fuck off mate. Stop speaking to us in your utterly creepy sinister way. We hate you. Honestly just try fucking off. You’re an abuser talking to us nicely in public to defraud onlookers” about Jeremy Corbyn
“Shout out to all the Labour MP’s who said enough was enough but then decided to stay in a racist party”
“The only way for Labour to win back the trust of the Jewish community is to wrest control of the Party from the antisemitic Marxists and Trotskyites”
“Corbyn is more comfortable in the company of Jew-killers than he is with Jews”
“BBC Newsnight continue to play Jews off against each other by giving a voice to Jewish Voice for Labour”
“Dear BBC News. Do you really hate the Jewish community so much that you are willing to run a story about a tiny, inconsequential number of Jews (Jewish Voice for Labour) many of whom have a troubling history of antisemitism – writing a letter that unsurprisingly expresses their support of Corbyn”
“BBC Newsnight gave space for Jewish Voice for Labour, AGAIN. The BBC should no platform them. #BBC=Jewbaiters”
“Chris Evans MP marked Holocaust Memorial Day yet today the same MP continues to serve an antisemitic leader as a member of an institutionally racist party”
“It seems to be National Hang on it turns out Owen Jones really is a deranged and nasty twat day”
“If I put on this wetsuit and climb down into the sewer headfirst like Seamus Milne and Jeremy asked, then I just know I’m going to get a safe seat. Never mind the smell. Think of the glory”
“Corbyn is a revolting racist unfit to be an MP let alone lead Labour. Take your rose tinted specs off. He’s just a nasty man”
“If this party didn’t have the branding of Labour they’d be designated a hate organisation”.
Damien Stone
